Category: News

Apple has released iPadOS 16.2, and with that, Stage Manager support for external monitors. At least if you use an M1 or M2 equipped iPad, older iPads are stuck with screen mirroring, as before.

So, is it any good, Stage Manager on an external monitor?

No, not really. Everything I’ve written about it still stands, it’s buggy and confusing. It does make more sense on larger screens, and definitely on my XDR Display, but it’s also so very limited in the way you can arrange app windows. Not to mention that it crashes from time to time, still. It’s more stable than before, though, so there’s that. More on this at a later date, as well as the new Freeform app, which I’ve been using for some time. I’m looking forward to seeing how well it works for collaborations, now that it’s available for all.

It seems we might be getting new iPad Pros any day now because Apple has removed the old promo videos from its Youtube channel (thanks Steve, for pointing this out). This is common, Apple doesn’t keep promos for old models around, so this should mean that new iPad Pro models are imminent. Since there hasn’t been any event invites, these new models will likely be announced via press release, as has been rumored. I’d expect that to happen no later than tomorrow, Tuesday, so if you’re in the market for an iPad Pro, I’d hold off another day or so.

The new iPad Pros will likely use the new M2 chip. Here’s hoping the 11” model will get that glorious screen from the 12.9” model, although I wouldn’t bet on it. I don’t expect any major changes to the hardware, surely that would warrant an event, so this’ll most likely be another incremental update.

Bloomberg’s Apple analyst Mark Gurman speculates that there might not be another Apple event this year after all. The rumor-mill, to which Gurman frequently contributes, has been pretty adamant that there’d be an October event to announce new Macs and, more importantly for Switch to iPad readers, iPad Pros. With the delay of iPadOS 16, an event seemed even more likely.

That said, Gurman might be on to something here, assuming the iPad Pro upgrades are M2 chips with the current generation’s design. The M2 chips got enough stage-time in Apple’s MacBook Air announcement, so there’s no real news value talking extensively about them. Looking at the state of iPadOS 16.1, it seems unlikely that Apple would want to bang the drum too hard, most likely launching 16.1 with the key feature Stage Manager under a beta moniker.

It’s been a rough couple of months for Apple when it comes to iPad. I hope I’m wrong, and that we’ll get at least a shorter Apple event highlighting iPad (and new Macs, of course), but I wouldn’t be surprised if Gurman is correct on this one.